Correlates of perceived social support amongst graduate students in malaysia

The aim of this study is to examine whether there are differences in social support dimensions of graduate students in terms of demographic profile. The number of participants was 534 graduate students (155 male and 379 female) randomly selected in one Malaysian university. The age of students ranged from 19 to 45; with mean age of 27.10. Apart from, applying descriptive statistic such as frequency, mean and, the data were statistically tested using a one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), through SPSS, version 19. The finding of this study displayed that there were significant differences in total social support, and its’ dimensions such as family support and friend support across different faculties. The same result found for family among different races. Likewise, there was significant difference only in family support among various age groups. Furthermore, using t-test, significant differences observed across genders. In this regard, significant differences have established in total social support, family and friends. In addition, social support and significant others were significantly different in terms of marital status. However, there were no significant differences in social support of graduate students across different semesters, employment status and family sizes.